dark mode

Dark mode is a second system, not an inversion

Inverting a light theme produces a dark theme that is technically dark and visibly wrong. Saturated colors that read as confident on white become fluorescent on near-black. Shadows, which worked by darkening, have nothing left to darken. Text that was comfortable at 7:1 turns into glare at the same ratio with the polarity flipped.

What actually transfers is the structure — the hierarchy of surfaces, the relative emphasis of text levels — not the values. Build the dark theme as its own token set solving for the same relationships: raise surface lightness for elevation instead of casting shadows, pull chroma down 20–40% on accents, and target a slightly higher contrast for body text than the light theme needed.

The two most common failures are both easy to check. A pure black background produces halation around light text; start the darkest surface somewhere near L 12–18% instead. And elevation built from stacked translucent whites drifts blue and loses saturation as it stacks — compute each surface level directly instead.